An hour a day to fight the decay

It’s time to up the stakes about health — for myself and for anyone reading this. Here it is, the unvarnished truth the authors of “Younger Next Year” champion that makes so much sense: We must work out at least an hour a day, six days a week for the rest of our lives if we are going to hold our own against the relentless tide of decay.

That’s an hour a day, six days a week. Non-negotiable. The tide that is constantly working on eroding our bodies never stops. We can’t either.

So that pathetic little New Year’s resolution that I made forty-two days ago to do something physical for at least ten minutes a day doesn’t cut it. I’ve got to do a serious shift in my approach if I am going to take the uncompromising advice of Dr. Henry Lodge, one of the authors of the book “Younger Next Year.” You can buy the book online for $8.08 and it will be the best $8.08 that you ever spend. This book will shake every conventional view you have unknowingly nurtured over the 50-plus years of your life.

It’s time to start a revolution. Starting with you. Now.

As Dr. Lodge predicts in the book, “In twenty years, failure to exercise six days a week will seem as self-destructive as smoking two packs of cigarettes a day.” Talk about a statement that should get your attention.

So, what do you do about this new way of looking at the urgency of regular physical activity? You find a gym and you make a commitment. You make a commitment to go to that gym just as regularly as you go to work. That’s what the authors expect of you.

Sure, you could work out on your own, but it’s easy to put it off when something else comes up. How many times do we skip out on our job when something else comes up? That’s the point. You have got to make it an every-day-one-hour commitment.

I know it’s hard. Heck, I feel as if I stay pretty active and even when I was doing my very best to be regular with my exercise, I only committed to doing at least a mile of running every day. And then I only did that for 453 straight days. At the time, I was pretty proud of that accomplishment. But, I have to admit, many of those days, the extent of my physical activity was the bare minimum I had set for myself — one mile. And one mile only takes about 10 minutes if I’m running really easy.

So, back when I was at my physical peak, you could make a case that on many days I was only doing 1/6th of what the authors of “Younger Next Year” expect from me.

That relentless tide haunts me. I want to hold off the decaying process as long as I possibly can.

So I need to be honest with myself. While I may be in better physical shape than maybe half of Americans over the age of 50, I am still slowly losing the battle with the tide, that persistent tide of decay.

And I don’t want to end up on the beach where the crabs and the seagulls can peck away at my carcass.

So, what’s my game plan? I’m a high school coach, so I always need a “game plan.”

Mine is simple. I have less than a month left on my arrangement with CrossFit Marysville to use their gym and report on how it is improving my life. So it’s going to be six trips across “The Flats” to Marysville every night a week to keep the tide in check.

I don’t have an excuse. They run classes every hour from 3:00PM to 7:00PM. I’ve just got to treat it as if it is my job.